While the political experts remain divided over what impact the Obama administration will have on the United States, many ordinary Americans feel their country has been transformed.

The economy, Iraq, Afghanistan and healthcare are cited as the main challenges facing the President-elect.

Atlanta resident Ann Nixon Cooper personifies the change that Obama seeks for the United States. In his acceptance speech, Obama cited the 106-year-old as evidence of just how far the US has come in terms of race issues.

But America has not been reborn overnight as a paragon of secular liberalism. Even as Obama delivered his historic address in Chicago’s Grant Park, the states of Florida, Arizona and California voted for constitutional bans on gay marriage.

And the problems encountered by many black Americans – inequalities in education, healthcare and the justice system to name a few – are equally as unlikely to disappear overnight.

Copyright © 2012 euronews